Lords ammendment

[halfstoned]

MP's vote again on Monday to allow water companies to keep dumping raw sewage in to our rivers. I've contacted Mel Stride to ask him to support the Lords ammendment . Not sure it will do any good but if we all bombard our MP's with messages it might help, they do work for us after all, apparently!

Duke of Wellington ammendment

Duty on sewerage undertakers to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows

[halfstoned]

The government is trying to amend the Environment Bill so that water companies must only
"secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impact of discharges from
the undertaker’s storm overflows"

Which is alarmingly vague, weak and loophole-ish!

Mike Blackmoor
Head of Wessex Rivers Trust

[terry]

I’ve struggled to find through various web sites any conclusions/comments on this bill but could not find owt.
A agenda list on the Lords website for November 8th did not mention it but they have discussed recruiting and employing au pairs from the EU which is obviously far more important. I really don’t understand the workings of British politics so If anyone knows anything I would love to know any possible outcome.

[halfstoned]

Hi Terry, as stated above the Hol put forward an amendment to "take all reasonable steps" against discharging untreated sewage. The government rejected this and voted for a different amendment to "secure a progressive reduction " so if a water company discharges sewage for 10,000 hours in year one and then reduces this by 1 hour the year after it will have met the criteria! On top of that the water companies are self regulated, reporting their own "reductions", utter madness! Sadly the second reading yesterday (Monday) was passed in favour of the government's weaker amendment. Now back to the Lords I think. I did contact Mel Stride and ask him to protect our rivers and beaches by supporting the Lords ammendment, he didn't. Check out Fergal Sharkey on twitter for the latest info on this.

[terry]

Thanks Chris I appreciate you explaining the route of the bill. It really strengthens my believe that not enough ordinary people have any real impact and we all know (especially after the last few days) that the politicians will have their way and Ofwat can’t or won’t do bugger all about it. Perhaps we need to get Greta Thunberg on our side.

[yeoman]

I also contacted Mr Stride over this matter, and heard nothing.
It's interesting to look at how Mel Stride votes in the Commons generally.....I'll let you make your own mind up.....

[yeoman]

Well I finally got a reply from Mel Stride.
Here are the bullet points (according to him) of the environmental bill that received Royal Assent on 9/11/21.

a new duty on Government to produce a statutory plan to reduce discharges from storm overflows and their adverse impact, and report to Parliament on progress.

a requirement for government to produce a report setting out the actions that would be needed to eliminate discharges from storm overflows in England, and the costs and benefits of those actions. Both publications are required before 1 September 2022.

a new duty directly on water companies and the Environment Agency to publish data on storm overflow operation on an annual basis.

a new duty directly on water companies to publish near real time information on the operation of storm overflows.

a new duty directly on water companies to monitor the water quality upstream and downstream of storm overflows and sewage disposal works.

a new duty directly on water companies to produce comprehensive statutory Drain-age and Sewerage Management Plans, setting out how they will manage and develop their drainage and sewerage system over a minimum 25-year planning horizon, including how storm overflows will be addressed through these plans.

a power of direction for the government to direct water companies in relation to the actions in these Drainage and Sewerage Management Plans. We will not hesitate to use this power of direction if plans are not good enough.

[halfstoned]

Hum, so produce a plan, produce a report, lay out how it's going to take 25 years, leave monitoring in the hands of the polluter but make discharge notices more "real time".
Kick can down road and hope nobody cares.
Surely all these "duties" were already in place under the water framework directive that promised cleaner rivers by 2015? Or was it 2019 no 2021 or maybe 2027 I forget.

[yeoman]

Aye....all looks disturbingly wooly, but then were we expecting anything else?